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Reconstructing late Ch'ing Fengt'ien
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
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It is generally recognized that modern knowledge of the functioning of Chinese society is radically imperfect, and that this is increasingly the case as the topic of discussion is the more limited in locality and the more confined to the domestic details of native Chinese civilization. As the study of the complexities and subtleties of local social and economic organization in our own cities and countrysides has grown and developed, together with that of many other parts of the world with infinitely shorter histories and weaker societies than those of China, students of China have become increasingly aware of the great gulf which resides between what it would be satisfying to know about the China of the past (and the present), and the little which is known in detail, and with any degree of certainty, about these topics.
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References
1 China Imperial Maritime Customs. Returns of trade and trade reports, Shanghai, 1909, Newchwang, Trade Report; facing p. 70; size approximately 43½×37 cm. This map is here reproduced on a reduced scale. The text of the Newchwang trade report contains no comment on the map.Google Scholar
2 The author warmly thanks Urgungge Onon, lecturer in Mongolian and Chinese studies in the University of Leeds, for his painstaking guidance in the use of Japanese-language materials. He also thanks Professor Owen Lattimore for his comments on a first draft of this paper.
3 Japan, Gaimushō, Minami Manshū ni okeru shōgyō (A survey of south Manchuria from the viewpoint of commerce), Tokyo, 1907, chapter 17, pp. 241–365. In spite of what may be taken to be a political bias in its origin, this thorough compendium carries abundant conviction in purely economic terms. This book was found (together with others of which use has been made) in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and the author is grateful for the generous hospitality of the Library.Google Scholar
4 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., p. 242. Almost the same figure is given for 1915—177,957—after a decade of rapid physical change.Google Scholar Hong Kong Daily Press, Directory and Chronicle (1917), p. 744.Google Scholar Surprisingly, a figure of 301,000 is given for the same area, the old city, in the early 'thirties (Gibert, L., Dictionnaire historique et géographique de la Mandchourie, Hong Kong, 1934. In Ch'ing times, Shengching and Fengt'ien were both alternative names for both the city now called by the much older name Shenyang, and the province equivalent to the present Liaoning.Google Scholar
5 Japan, Gaimushō, op cit. p. 243. Population density in the inner city works out at 80 to the acre or 200 to the hectare, higher than in the outer city in spite of the palace site.Google Scholar
6 von Richthofen, F., China, vol. 2, Berlin, 1882, pp. 159–60.Google Scholar
7 Hosie, Alexander, Manchuria, its people, resources and recent history, London, 1904, p. 13.Google Scholar Baring, Maurice, in With the Russians in Manchuria, London, 1905, p. 37, found the place romantic, and called it ‘an oriental masterpiece’.Google Scholar Weale, B. L. Putnam (Simpson, B. L.), in Manchu and Muscovite, London, 1904, p. 463, called it ‘a baby Peking’.Google Scholar
8 Wen-hsüan, Chai and Shih-i, Tsang (eds.), Fengt'ien t'ung-chih (Gazetteer of Fengt'ien), gives the names of the four original gates. This authority puts the change to eight gates (and by implication the adoption of the well-field shape, though this is not discussed) in Ch'ing times.Google Scholar The late Japanese authority Mammō zensho (Encyclopaedia of Manchuria and Mongolia), Dairen, 1922–1923, vol. 7, p. 1286, dates the change from Ming times. Both authorities, and others, agree that reconstructions of the inner wall were undertaken in 1389 and 1632. The outer wall dates from 1681.Google Scholar
9 Temporary immigration from China into Manchuria was taking place at the turn of the century at a rate which (using Hosie's figures in Manchuria, p. 173) must have been approaching 50,000 per annumGoogle Scholar; and a proportion of these people remained permanently in Manchuria. Men in Fengt'ien were twice as numerous as women (Japan, Gaimushō, op cit., p. 243), partly by reason of this flow of immigrants from China; partly by reason (Christie, Dugald, Thirty years in Moukden, 1883–1913, London, 1914, p. 17) of a flow of men into the city from the Manchurian countryside.Google Scholar
10 Lin, T. C., ‘Manchuria in the Ming Empire’, Nankai social and economic quarterly (Tientsin), 8 (1935) passimGoogle Scholar, and ‘Manchurian trade and tribute in the Ming dynasty’, ibid., 9 (1937), passim, on many points of detail. Lattimore, Owen, in Inner Asian Frontiers of China, Boston, 1941, and elsewhere, has explored the whole question of the relations between China and Manchuria.Google Scholar
11 Weale, B. L. Putnam, op. cit., p. 466.Google Scholar
12 Japan, Gaimushō, op cit., pp. 245–7. This table presents some problems of interpretation in detail. A few expressions are used whose meaning is not known. There are also some signs of inconsistency in enumeration between the table and the text of the book. The figure for building is obviously incomplete, and it has consequently been amended here. The table also presents some much more important problems of interpretation in principle. It consists of a list of numbers of establishments which engage in particular sorts of business, and it gives no indication of the size of any particular enterprise. Hence no close estimate can be made of the relative sizes of the various parts of the city's business economy. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that many businesses engaged in more than one trade; it is not stated how this situation has been handled in the Gaimushō table. The table does not distinguish (except by implication of the activity named) between manufacturing and trade.Google Scholar
13 It is of passing interest to observe that by 1905 sewing machines were universally in use at the tailors' in Newchwang (Foreign Office, Consular Reports, No. 3354Google Scholar; , Newchwang, May 1905, p. 13). It does not transpire whether the same was true of Fengt'ien.Google Scholar
14 Hosie, A., op. cit., p. 11.Google Scholar
15 Partly the product of domestic animals, partly of wild. Hosie, (op. cit., p. 205, following a note in the Newchwang consular report for 1887), says that the most important branch of the skin and fur trade of Manchuria, and passing through Fengt'ien, was the skins of dogs and goats, bred for the purpose. In most authoritics, only the fur of wild animals is mentioned, e.g. in China, Imperial Maritime CustomsGoogle Scholar, Decennial Reports, first issue, 1882–91, Shanghai, 1893, Newchwang Report, pp. 4–5Google Scholar. Tanneries appear here and there in street-names. There was a glue industry, including a local speciality in ass-hide glue which was famous as a medicine ( Hosie, , op. cit., p. 210).Google Scholar
16 SirHosie, Alexander says (op. cit., p. 106) that after 1861 when Newchwang was opened, ‘trade left the old channels and gravitated to the new port’, but the hold of Fengt'ien on the trade of the province, even without much advantage in water transport, was clearly too strong to be broken by Newchwang. Of course, trade as a whole was growing.Google Scholar
17 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., pp. 243–4. This account points out that the place had a large unproductive population among the leisured classes, there were one or two Peking-style restaurants inside the gates on all four sides (certainly the gates of the inner city); articles of consumption for the rich were plentiful and good, and so on.Google Scholar
18 This would give 2,500 shop and market businesses in the city, and one shop to about 70 persons. According to Eberhard's study of retail account books from Japanese times in Taipeh (Eberhard, W., ‘The business activities of a small Chinese merchant’, Monumenta Serica, vol. 21 (1962), pp. 345–56), modern Taipeh has about 70 persons to a shop, and he thinks that the same ratio would fit what he finds in retail account-books from the second decade of the century. The figure for Great Britain in 1950 was 72, and of course figures close to 70 were recorded for many individual towns in Britain.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Hosie, A., op. cit., pp. 161–3.Google Scholar
20 Hosie, A., op. cit., pp. 67–8.Google Scholar
21 Weale, B. L. Putnam, op. cit., p. 462.Google Scholar
22 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit. The figure of 38,733 appears in the table on p. 243. The heading used in the table, and here adopted as ‘servants’ is ku-jên (yatoinin), as opposed to chia-tsŭ (kazoku).Google Scholar
23 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., p. 349. The information given shows that in a period of thirty days in November and December 1906, 29,083 carts entered Fengt'ien. Winter was a busy season on the frozen roads; but this justifies an estimate of 300,000 carts entering Fengt'ien in the year.Google Scholar , Hosie (op. cit., pp. viivii and 15) was deeply impressed by ‘the vast trade of the interior’. The Gaimushō specifies the loads carried by the carts in its sample, and these are not without interest. About 43 per cent of the carts carried coal, and about 29 per cent grain. Proportions around 5 per cent carried cotton cloth or piece-goods, and miscellaneous goods (so called). The rest of the goods named (in descending order of numbers of carts) were: paper, timber, fruit (presumably dried); dried vegetables, tobacco, textiles, wheat flour, copper and iron, salt, furs, medicine, paraffin, leather, raw cotton, edible oils, and tea. The word lu (roku), a pulley, which occurs four times in street-names in the south or west, suggests some sort of public loading device for carts.Google Scholar
24 There are brief notes on the city's surroundings in Weale, B. L. Putnam, op. cit., p. 458Google Scholar, and in Christie, Dugald, op. cit., p. 17. The best contemporary map of the surroundings of Fengt'ien which has been found appears as an inset on the 1/84,000 scale in the GSGS map, Chih-Li Province Sheet 1, dated 1913.Google Scholar
25 Hosie, A., op. cit., p. 13.Google Scholar
26 Christie, Dugald, op. cit., p. 6. When the Scottish hospital was opened there in the 'eighties, the banks were ‘a favourite resort of pleasure-seekers and holiday-makers, who chat and sip tea in the many tea-booths’.Google Scholar
27 Christie, Iza, Dugald Christie of Manchuria, by his wife, London, 1932, pp. 61, 121. These features (not the college) appear by name or as Street names on the Encouragement of Industry map.Google Scholar
28 Yao-tseng, Lü and others, Sheng-ching t'ung-chih, edition of 1852, chüan 18. Chüan I of this work contains a traditional-style map of the city.Google Scholar
29 Weale, B. L. Putnam, op. cit., p. 465.Google Scholar
30 Yang, M. C. writes of his Shantung community (A Chinese Village, London, 1947, p. 135)—‘The Ch'en clan has altogether a dozen families. All of them live in the same neighbourhood, so that their association is obviously close … people of other clans refer to them as a Ch'en section—Ch'en Chia Hu T'ung.…’ Street names based on family names are common in other Chinese towns.Google Scholar
31 The ‘plan of Moukden’ printed as an inset in the GSGS map mentioned in note 29 names ‘Mohammedan quarter (20,000)’ in its key; but omits to mark the relevant symbol on the face of the map. It seems likely that 20,000 was intended as a figure for the number of Moslems. Dugald Christie agrees that the Moslems lived in a ‘quarter’, but he does not say where ( op. cit., p. 5). The mosque is located at the outer small west gate on the authority of the Imperial Japanese Government Railways' English language guideGoogle Scholar, An official guide to eastern Asia, vol. 1, Manchuria and Chōsen, Tokyo, 1913, p. 97.Google Scholar
32 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., p. 266.Google Scholar
33 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., p. 247. Old clothing is specifically mentioned. Second-hand clothing was a very respectable form of business in Fengt'ien, as befitted a city with so large an aristocratic source of cast-offs.Google Scholar
34 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., p. 248.Google Scholar
35 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., p. 247.Google Scholar
36 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., p. 295. This market is not mentioned in the English-language Manchuria and Chösen guide of 1913 (note 31), but reappears in the Japanese South Manchuria Railway Company'sGoogle Scholar Minami Manshū tetsudō-yokō annai (Guide to southern Manchuria), Tokyo, 1929, p. 74, where old clothes are mentioned as a standard business. See also note 38.Google Scholar
37 The most explicit reference occurs in the Imperial Japanese Government Railways' official guide to eastern Asia, vol. i, Manchuria and Chōsen (1913), already mentioned. This authority names two morning markets, ‘owned by Chinese’, one outside each of the inner east gates–and these are the only markets which it names, apart from a Japanese one outside the outer small east gate.Google Scholar
38 The Gaimushō authority (p. 248) says that skin businesses were concentrated between the two inner east gates, along the wall (not really evidence for a market), and that the fish-market lay inside the inner great east gate. On the Encouragement of Industry map, two streets close to the inner small east gate, inside the wall, are named from the fish trade, and the poultry market is named adjacent to them. Street-name evidence would in fact suggest the prolongation of the market street alongside the east wall both northwards (vegetables) and southwards (cooked food), for a total length of about 1,500 metres (about a mile); but of course this evidence is not conclusive for the decade under discussion. Conviction is however added to the identification of this market by evidence from two authorities of a generation later in time: the South Manchuria Railway Company's guide of 1929, and the Fengt'ien l'ung-chih, whose tabulations are mostly for about 1929. According to the 1929 guide (p. 74) a continuous series of long, narrow market streets—very unusual for Manchuria—extended along the outer face of the inner wall between the great west and the great east gates. The eastern side specialized in furniture. On the southern side, the eastern end specialized in greengrocery and meat; the central in antiques and mixed businesses; and the western end, together with the western side itself up to the great west gate, in old clothing and metalwork. The list of the markets of the city which appears in the Fengt'ien t'ung-chih (chüan 87) is so interesting in itself, apart from the rather variable light which it throws on the present discussion, that it is here reproduced in detail. Gates referred to are those of the inner city. grain inside the small north gate silver inside the great north gate firewood outside the small south gate (‘coal is now generally used’) outside the small east gate outside the great west gate outside the small west gate outside the small north gate, extending westwards horses outside the small south gate (north of the fêng-yü temple) vegetables outside the small east gate, extending northwards. The chief market of all, with many trades. (Contrast the evidence from the earlier period) outside the great south gate, extending eastwards outside the great west gate, northwards of p'ing-k'ang (i.e. some 700 metres from the gate) fresh fish outside the small east gate, east of the vegetable market meat outside the small east gate, west of the vegetable market outside the great south gate, west of the vegetable market poultry outside the small east gate, south of the barbican fish inside the small east gate, in the main street fruit south of the bell-tower (in mid-autumn) inside the small east gate melons outside the great east gate, extending southwards labour outside the great west gate, west of the south-west redoubt (the localities marked on the Encouragement of Industry map are respectively southwest and south-east of that redoubt. This is one of a number of places where the fit between this Fengt'ien t'ung-chih list and the earlier information is not very good) lamps south of the bell-tower (twice yearly) jars outside the great north gate outside the small north gate stone inside the small west gate, extending southwards old clothing inside the small west gate, in Szŭ-p'ing-chieh outside the small south gate outside the great west gate outside the great north gate, extending west charcoal south of the bell-tower (‘in recent years, the offices and businesses use coal, and the practice is spreading’) leather inside the small west gate (one of the two p'i-hang street names is here) hats inside the small west gate cooked food outside the great east gate, extending south (as suggested by the street-names) timber north of Szŭ-p'ing-chieh, in the inner city in the outer city, at the small north gate copper south of Szŭ-p'ing-chieh (in the street named from the copper trade, t'ung-hang hu-t'ung)Google Scholar
39 These are also marked (as marché) on the rather bare map which appears in , Madrolle's North China, Paris and London, 1912, p. 228.Google ScholarPubMed
40 Japan, Gaimushō, op. cit., p. 358.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., p. 357.
42 Ibid., p. 248.
43 Christie, Iza, op. cit., p. 141.Google Scholar
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45 Ibid., p. 153.
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48 Ibid., p. 187.
49 Ibid., pp. 184–7.
50 Ibid., p. 196.
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54 From the northern side. According to the Mammō zensho, from the northern fringes. Mammō zensho (Encyclopaedia of Manchuria and Mongolia, already mentioned), vol. 7, p. 1286.Google Scholar The same point is implicit in the 1913 guide (Imperial Japanese Government Railways, op. cit., pp. 102–3). In this list, the bulk of Japanese firms which had addresses in the old city were located at the west side, and about half of the foreign firms other than Japanese. No Chinese firms were so located.Google Scholar
55 Balazs, E., ‘Chinese Towns’, from Receuils de la société Jean Bodin, vol. 6 (1954), pp. 225–39Google Scholar, reprinted in Chinese civilisation and bureaucracy (1964), pp. 66–78.Google Scholar Eberhard, W., ‘Data on the structure of the Chinese city in the pre-industrial period’, Economic development and cultural change, vol. 4 (1955), pp. 253–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
56 Richthofen on Hsiang-t'an: ‘I was told by the merchants of Sian-tan, that this city is the centre of trade in medicines for nearly the whole Empire.’ von Richthofen, F., Baron Richthofen's Letters, 1870–1872, second edition, Shanghai, 1903, p. 13.Google Scholar